ADELAIDE chairman Rob Chapman has defended the club's decision to maintain chief executive Steven Trigg after a specially convened board meeting unanimously decided he was the best man for the job.

Chapman was prepared for a torrent of criticism after he came out of the specially convened meeting late morning but told The Sunday Mail and was fully aware it was not a populist choice - but he is convinced it was the right one.

The obvious analogy in the criticism is that had Trigg acted the way he allegedly did in the corporate world, he would be shown the door.

But he was backed by both the AFL and the Crows to stay and Chapman said there were parts of the Tippett saga that would and could never been established because the warring factions could not agree on a set of facts.

"We're giving Steven the benefit of doubt," Chapman said.

"It wasn't an easy decision and it wasn't the populist decision but it was the right decision.

"I understand why people are raising the points that they're raising, because without having the full context of the events and the history of what happened, you'd ask those questions," Chapman said.

"Without having a full set of facts, it's hard to draw any other conclusion.

"But the all of the facts aren't going to come out because they commission couldn't agree on one set of facts - there were two: one from us and one from the Tippett camp.

"What happened from there was that we accepted a range of sanctions."

Trigg addressed the media yesterday in a confrontingly honest manner, speaking of his self doubt and his thoughts of just walking away.

There have been long and testing conversations between him and Chapman, with Trigg continuously asking whether he'd be doing the club a disservice by staying.

But Chapman had been unflinching and there was not an ounce of doubt in his voice as he lined up the reasons for keeping Trigg to The Sunday Mail.

"I and the board are backing Steven to be the best person to lead the club forward.

"Why keep him? Good CEOs are hard to find in the AFL.

"There are only 18 of them and they all have a job.

"It would take more than several months to recruit, select and induct a new CEO and why take that risk when we have an excellent CEO who has all the corporate knowledge of years of planning for the move to Adelaide Oval, knowledge about the transfer of the license (from the SANFL to the club), the work that's gone into a seconds team?"

A NOTE ABOUT RELEVANT ADVERTISING: We collect information about the content (including ads) you use across this site and use it to make both advertising and content more relevant to you on our network and other sites.